In a process of manufacturing semiconductor devices, plat panels such as liquid crystal displays, and so on, substrates such as semiconductor wafers (hereinafter referred to as wafers) and glass substrates, which are accommodated in a substrate transfer container, are loaded to a loading port of a semiconductor manufacturing apparatus, and take out of the substrate transfer container by a transfer arm in the semiconductor manufacturing apparatus to be transferred to a processing module of the semiconductor manufacturing apparatus.
A multi-chamber system is one example of the semiconductor manufacturing apparatus. The multi-chamber system has a first transfer chamber of an atmospheric pressure atmosphere which is connected to the loading port. In addition, the multi-chamber system has a second transfer chamber which is connected to a plurality of processing modules for performing an etching process and a deposition process by CVD (Chemical Vapor Deposition) and is under a vacuum atmosphere common to the plurality of processing modules. In addition, the multi-chamber system has a load-lock chamber which is interposed between the first transfer chamber and the second transfer chamber, switches between the vacuum atmosphere and the atmospheric pressure atmosphere and makes substrates stand by. In addition, in the multi-chamber system, multi-joint transfer arms configured to allow a wafer holder (pick) at a leading end to hold a backside of a wafer are respectively provided in the first transfer chamber and the second transfer chamber. In addition, in the multi-chamber system, the first transfer chamber is connected with an alignment chamber including an orientor for aligning the wafer. The orientor performs the aligning of the wafer such that a notch formed in an edge of the wafer faces a predetermined direction by rotating the wafer around a vertical axis through a pedestal (stage) holding the central portion of the backside of the wafer (see, e.g., Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication Nos. 2009-088222 and 2008-300609).
Here, there is a technique for performing temperature adjustment when the alignment is performed. There is also a gripping mechanism for gripping the circumference of the wafer by an opening/closing operation.
However, the above-described technique has a problem of inefficiency of alignment.